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# Listening as a Creative Act: Meaningful Differences in Structural Annotations of Improvised Performances

## Details

**Authors** Smith, Jordan B. L. and Schankler, Isaac and Chew, Elaine

**Year** 2014

**Publisher** Music Theory Online

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Music Theory

**Secondary disciplines** Cognitive Science

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.3/mto.14.20.3.smith_schankler_chew.php)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To examine why two listeners produce different structural analyses of the same improvised music, and to identify the sources of those differences.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

Three improvised duets, recorded over three weeks, between the pianist Isaac Schankler (keyboard) and the human-machine improvisation system Mimi. Two annotators: Schankler (the improviser) and Smith (an independent listener).

### How they did it (methods)

Case study. Each annotator independently produced a structural annotation of each performance at two levels, uppercase letters for large sections and lowercase for subsections, in a single session of about half an hour per piece with free replay. Each annotator then wrote justifications for boundaries and groupings, and the two compared annotations and discussed every disagreement.

### What they found (results)

The annotators disagreed at 16 points (four in performance 1, six in performance 2, six in performance 3). The authors attribute the differences to five factors: analysis method (a minor, procedural factor), the musical features each listener attended to, how each heard the opening moments, differences in prior information about the performances, and differences in analytical expectations. In performance 3, one annotator tracked motivic recurrence while the other tracked surface qualities such as register and texture. One annotator heard the opening as two themes and the other as one, which changed later recognition of repeated material. The authors conclude that differences between structural analyses are often meaningful and arise because the listeners paid attention to different musical features.

## Commentary

### In short

Two listeners independently divided the same three improvised duets into sections and subsections, then traced each disagreement to what each had attended to, known, and expected.

### Response

The study bears on three of the four patterns. Perspectives carry the central finding: two listeners, each with a different vantage point (the improviser versus an outside listener) and different attentional focus, produce different valid analyses of the same sound. Distinctions are visible in the disputed boundaries between sections, and in how hearing the opening as one theme or two changes which later material counts as a repeat. Systems appear in the two-level hierarchy of sections and subsections that both annotators used. Caveats: the sample is two annotators who are also the authors, the design was chosen to maximize disagreement, and the authors state that generalization would need a larger study. The authors do not frame the work in terms of perspective-taking as a general structure; the mapping is ours.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, P

Shows the structure is there

**Added** 2026-11-02

**How to cite this** Smith, Jordan B. L. and Schankler, Isaac and Chew, Elaine (2014). Listening as a Creative Act: Meaningful Differences in Structural Annotations of Improvised Performances. Music Theory Online.